Abstract
Objectives. To systematically review and meta-analyze the effectiveness of yoga for menopausal symptoms. Methods. Medline, Scopus, the Cochrane Library, and PsycINFO were screened through April 2012. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were included if they assessed the effect of yoga on major menopausal symptoms, namely, (1) psychological symptoms, (2) somatic symptoms, (3) vasomotor symptoms, and/or (4) urogenital symptoms. For each outcome, standardized mean differences (SMDs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. Two authors independently assessed risk of bias using the risk of bias tool recommended by the Cochrane Back Review Group. Results. Five RCTs with 582 participants were included in the qualitative review, and 4 RCTs with 545 participants were included in the meta-analysis. There was moderate evidence for short-term effects on psychological symptoms (SMD = −0.37; 95% CI −0.67 to −0.07; P = 0.02). No evidence was found for total menopausal symptoms, somatic symptoms, vasomotor symptoms, or urogenital symptoms. Yoga was not associated with serious adverse events. Conclusion. This systematic review found moderate evidence for short-term effectiveness of yoga for psychological symptoms in menopausal women. While more rigorous research is needed to underpin these results, yoga can be preliminarily recommended as an additional intervention for women who suffer from psychological complaints associated with menopause.
Highlights
Menopause is defined as the permanent cessation of ovarian function and is thereby the end of a woman’s reproductive phase [1]
Ten full-text articles were assessed [37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46] and 5 articles were excluded; 1 article did not assess menopausal symptoms [37], 1 Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was published in Korean language [38], and 3 articles reported additional outcome measures for already included studies on the same participant population [39,40,41]
4 RCTs with overall 545 participants were included in the meta-analysis (Figure 1)
Summary
Menopause is defined as the permanent cessation of ovarian function and is thereby the end of a woman’s reproductive phase [1]. Menopause begins around the age of 50 years [2] and is characterized by at least 12 months of amenorrhea [3] While it is an inevitable part of every woman’s life, about 3 out of every 4 women experience complaints during menopause [4, 5]. The most common menopausal symptoms include hot flashes, night sweats, fatigue, pain, decreased libido, and mood changes [6,7,8]. These symptoms often persist for several years postmenopause [9]. While the most recent research has shown relatively low risk of severe adverse events for hormone replacement within the first 10 years of menopausal onset [10, 11, 13], the long-standing uncertainty about its safety has led to significant decreases in hormone prescriptions to menopausal women [14]
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